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Conclusions and recommendations


Conclusions and recommendations

Themes

Issues related to population dynamics and to the status and roles of women in the context of agriculture and rural development are not always in the main focus of the literature presented in this Bibliography. However, these topics figure prominently as integral part of broader elaborations on agriculture and rural development in the PALOPs. It can thus be claimed that literature in Portuguese on these issues does merit interest on the part of all who wish to provide assistance in the development of the PALOPs.

As regards social science periodicals in Portuguese, most of them are devoted to socio-political and cultural-anthropological issues in the PALOPs. The WPD-related issues are best covered, though infrequently, in few journals in the PALOPs, such as Soronda and Estudos Moçambicanos, as well as in Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos, issued in Lisbon.

Themes that dominate in the literature presented in this Bibliography, are the following:

Other themes that prevail in the presented references are the following:

There are themes that are only rarely touched upon, or are totally absent from literature presented in this Bibliography (which reflects the economic and social situation in the PALOPs), such as:

The only PALOP on which WPD-related literature has not been identified and is practically totally missing is São Tomé e Príncipe.

Authors

The majority of authors presented in this Bibliography are from the PALOPs. Most of them pursue academic careers. Many have devoted their Master theses and Doctoral dissertations at Portuguese Universities to agriculture and rural development issues in their countries. Other authors are mostly Portuguese scholars, and also, rarely, of other nationalities (e.g., German, French, Swedish).

None of the presented authors is a Population Studies specialist, and only few are specialists in gender-related rural development. They are all mostly rural sociologists, cultural-anthropologists, agricultural economists and geographers. Almost all of them have had personal experience in field research and/or agriculture and rural development projects among the smallholder producers in the PALOPs, which probably explains their high sensibility for social and gender-asymmetries against women, and their appreciation of the socio-demographic dimension of development.

Institutions

Most PALOPs have their University, research, or information/documentation institutions which have already been, or could easily become, solid partners in population projects. Such institutions are, for example, Acção pare o Desenvolvimento Rural e Ambiente (ADRA) in Luanda, Centro de Estudos Socio-económicos, Instituto National de Estudos e Pesquisa (INEP) in Bissau, and Departamento pare Estudos da Mulher e do Género (DEMO) at the University Eduardo Modlaine in Maputo.

Among institutions identified in Lisbon as sources of literature for this Bibliography, some are qualified for various WPD-related activities in the PALOPs. As regards information/documentation, education, training and public sensitization, the best equipped and most experienced in Lisbon are CIDAC - Centro de Informação e Documentação Amilcar Cabral, and OIKOS (both are NGOs). In the area of population and gender studies, highest qualifications and significant experience have INDE Intercooperação e Desenvolvimento (development consultants' NGO), Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (a government institute with tradition in overseas studies), and Centro de Estudos Africanos, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa - ISCTE (which also offers post-graduate studies).

Suggestions for FAO/UNFPA TSS

In the context of the above comments on authors and institutions, on the dominant themes and, especially, on the missing in this Bibliography, it is suggested here that FAO and UNFPA could improve the implementation of the TSS in the PALOPs, for example, by:

The Bibliography presented here is by no means a comprehensive state-of-art report on WPD-related issues in the PALOPs. To this effect, sources in the PALOPs themselves should also have been consulted. Hopefully, however, this Bibliography represents a pertinent contribution to the removal of communication barriers to a better understanding of these countries' reality, and could serve as an inspiration to FAO and UNFPA for intensifying their technical assistance to Lusophone Africa.

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